22 May 2024

After a somewhat frustrating month of persistent requests, I finally managed to secure a meeting with two members of the Suez management team on Monday (13th May). The purpose of the meeting was to discuss Suez's poor performance since they took over the waste collection contract in late March.

The meeting was moderately constructive, and I was able to get answers to many of the pressing questions that I’ve been asking for the past few weeks. Unfortunately, some of the responses I received were not as helpful or informative as I had hoped.

Once the service stabilises and is running smoothly, we will compile a comprehensive report on the mobilisation of the contract. This report will hopefully provide more transparency and detail than I am currently able to share.

On a broader level, it seems fair to say that the responsibility for the current issues is likely spread across all parties involved. There were multiple small failures that compounded, resulting in a fairly disastrous switchover period.

The problems have now been identified and are being actively addressed on a daily basis. Over the past couple of weeks, Suez's round completion rates have shown significant improvement.

Unfortunately, this progress has still not been as evident in the more rural areas. I am hopeful that the further changes to the service, which have taken effect from this week, will bring about continued improvements and finally get us to the stage where all the villages are being collected on their scheduled days (including food waste). The council will continue to monitor the situation closely to see how things develop.

Rich Lehmann
rich.lehmann@kent.gov.uk 
http://kentgreencouncillors.news/ 

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